Materials that accompany common pediatric drugs exceed most parents’ reading levels, according to a study in Academic Pediatrics.
Researchers filled identical prescriptions for two common pediatric medications — prednisolone (an anti-inflammatory steroid) and amoxicillin (an antibiotic) — at 20 pharmacies in Colorado, Georgia and Tennessee. Seventeen of the pharmacies provided written material along with the medications.
The researchers rated the difficulty of reading this material using two tests: the Flesch-Kincaid formula, which counts the average words per sentence and average syllables per word; and McLaughlin’s Simplified Measure of Gobbledygook, which focuses on the number of words with three or more syllables.
According to these formulas, the materials were written at an average grade level of around 9.6 or 11.2, respectively. At least 85% of parents nationwide would have trouble deciphering language of this complexity, “since less than 15% of parents nationwide read at or above a high school level,” a recent study said.
Is it ironic that the title of that study is Evaluation of Consumer Medical Information and Oral Liquid Measuring Devices Accompanying Pediatric Prescriptions?
What conclusion are we supposed to draw from the statistic that less than 15% of parents nationwide read at or above a high school level? (The high school graduation rate is over 70 percent.)